This week the issue of the EU extending EN 954-1; 1996 to 2012 is still the talk of machine safety. Some camps appear to feel comfort in the three additional years of needed time for industry to prepare for the new compliance requirements. I agree with other camps that are expressing a sense of discomfort because we believe the new EN ISO 13849-1; 2006 provides improved safety performance and machine operating efficiencies. Hence, with EN 954-1’s cessation being prolonged to 2012, we feel these needed benefits will be postponed into the future.

Here’s my wake-up call! We’ve already had three years to get ready but industry is lagging behind and I feel that suppliers are not applying enough attention to the transitional “Bridges”. Today, we’re still trying to get medium and small companies to understand the need and process to complete basic risk assessments. Most of the current tools for our segment of industry drive the hazard analysis to derive an objective category for each hazard identified. With this understood, what logical success can folks expect in getting industry to broadly step to the quantitative requirements of EN ISO 13849-1 when most of industry is still in the starting gates? We’re on opposite banks of the river!

Therefore, it’s my opinion that three additional years provide; suppliers, integrators, consultants, and manufacturers additional time to develop these missing bridges. Industry needs to transition from the objective based hazards (like Categories from EN 954-1) to the more difficult mathematically derived hazards (like Performance Levels from EN ISO 13849-1). Only training industry on the new requirements might work for 20% of industry - but what about the other 80%? They’re not ready for good reason!

As a safety product manufacturer, I would have to agree that integrators and OEM’s are not ready in the U.S. Other than large OEM’s, my customers are generally not doing risk assessments at all. They are doing safety as they have for the last 12-15 years with the goal of always reaching category 4. They don’t even try to realize the potential savings by going to a lower category because of a fear of lawyers. Also, the end user customers specify that the OEM must do risk assessments, but they also specify category 4 for all safety! Why bother doing an assessment?

We in the supplier world are trying to educate our customers, but it’s a long time off before they will accept the European way of doing assessments and sticking by the results. 13849 will be a major paradigm shift for U.S. companies and I believe it will reduce shipments of automation from the U.S. to Europe.

Annual Salary Survey

Before the calendar turned, 2016 already had the makings of a pivotal year for manufacturing, and for the world.

There were the big events for the year, including the United States as Partner Country at Hannover Messe in April and the 2016 International Manufacturing Technology Show in Chicago in September. There's also the matter of the U.S. presidential elections in November, which promise to shape policy in manufacturing for years to come.

But the year started with global economic turmoil, as a slowdown in Chinese manufacturing triggered a worldwide stock hiccup that sent values plummeting. The continued plunge in world oil prices has resulted in a slowdown in exploration and, by extension, the manufacture of exploration equipment.